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The Use of Psychology as a Justification of Discrimination

The purpose of this essay is to explore the ways science was
used in order to justify discrimination. An emphasis will be placed on
psychology and Mexican-Americans living in the United States that were the
targets of prejudices.

There were several areas of science that were used to
discriminate individuals in the United States. The first one that will be
explored is the intelligence test known as the Binet-Simon scales. It is
important to note that a test bias is an error that can be found in the results
of said tests in two ways. The first one is in the design of the test, such as
the sample chosen or the operant definition of a variable. The second form of a
test bias is seen socially. An example of the second form of bias is seen if a
certain group, such as Chicanos or Mexicans living in the U. S., were not
falling under the same regression line of the test.

There are four types of biases. The first one is called
construct validity. This means that even though a test is supposed to measure a
specific content, it is not accurately exploring it. In other words, a test is
not investigating the same idea that is trying to measure. An example of this
type of bias will be explored on the military test developed by American
Psychological Association (APA) president Robert Yerkes.

The second type of bias is called content validity. This is when
questions in the test are not fair for all participants. This can be caused by
a lack of experience from a certain group. For example, Mexican Americans could
be asked about food that is eaten traditionally in the south of America. But
because they do not have the experience of eating that type of food within their
culture, they should not be penalized or placed in a low category of mental
intelligence. Another example of this type of bias can be seen in the wording or
diction of tests. For example, if a question asks about instruments used for
fishing, but Mexican Americans do not live, and thus have not experienced so
far, in an environment surrounded of water bodies, the question would be
considered to have a content validity bias.

The third bias is known as item selection. This refers to the
notion, which is similar to content validity bias, that specific questions come
from what the dominant group, in this case white Americans, are expected to
know or perform. In other words, it is a narrowed type content validity bias, that
ignores certain groups, such as Chicanos.

The last type of bias that will be explored is named
criterion-related validity. This is the idea that the outcomes of a sample are
not accurate in describing the population that is the target of the study. An
example of this would be if Mexican Americans performed low in intelligence
tests, would it mean that they would under-perform on job markets or would they
not be successful employees because of their low intellect.

Before psychologist Ebbinghaus, who was known for his research
in memory, explored a way to test intelligence, a measure known as the
two-point threshold was correlated with academic performance. This measure
explored how far two stimuli, such as the fingers of researchers placed on the
backs of participants, had to be in order to be detected as two sources of physical
stimulation instead of one.

What Ebbinghaus did was give students incomplete sentences so
they could finish them in a complete manner. However, his test only divided
students into strong and weak ones in terms of intelligence. Like Ebbinghaus,
Binet thought that only cognitive processes such as memory tests and problem
solving tasks, and not physical tests could determine intelligence.

Students
who were not academically competent were placed into three categories: The
idiots, who were the worst of the worst, the imbeciles, who were better than
idiots, but still performed poorly, and the debiles, who were the ones who were
just below the average student, but still could be helped. The third category
did not have a name; it was Binet who named it.

The Binet-Simon scale was the result of the development of
Binet's test that involved cognitive processes and the help of his research
assistance Theodore Simon. Both of them categorized tasks that someone of a
certain age could perform, if the individual could not perform it, then they
would be considered subnormal. Tasks for a three-year-old included showing were
their facial feature where, for a five-year-old a task was to repeat a ten
syllable sentence, for a seven-year-old it was to copy written sentences.
Children who were nine years old had to arrange five weight in order (Dennis,
1984).

There are three things that are important to mention about
Binet's opinion of his test. First, he did not think that intelligence was a
unique component, but rather different types of skills interacting with each
other. The second notion was that intelligence was not fixed, but rather a
component of our lives that is always changing. Because of this idea, he
developed material to help children increase their intelligence. The third
belief was that his test would only be beneficial and useful in the educational
context (Goodwin, 2015).

The tests were used by other
psychologists to classify undesired groups as mentally retarded people,
especially in the 1900s. These groups included African Americans and Mexican
American individuals. The discrimination occurred because there was a cultural
bias in terms of the diction in the tests. This led intelligence to be
challenged in the court. An example of this is the case of Larry P. v. Wilson
Riles. The judge in the case ruled that the tests that were placing children on
special education classes were biased. Nevertheless, the opposite happened in
the case of Parents in Action in Special Education. The ruling in the latter
found that tests were not used to discriminate and were not culturally biased.

Psychologist Henry Goddard was the
one who brought Binet’s test to the United States. He tried to use the leave
the Binet scale and its techniques intact. However, he made the modification of
renaming the category of debiles to morons. He used the Greek word moronia,
which means foolish, as an inspiration to labeling the third category. This
last category boosted the discrimination towards undesired groups of people in
the U. S.

This happened because groups that
contained minorities, such as Chicanos, were said to be morons, and thus the
cause of a lot of problems in their contemporary society. This meant, for
eugenicists (the concept will be explained down below), that the answer would
be to remove the undesired groups from the United States.

However, the current IQ test is no
longer culturally biased. The National Academy of Science created two panels
and the American Psychological Association assembled a task force that found
that neither the IQ nor other standardize tests under predict how Mexican
American and other groups that are usually targets of discrimination would
perform.

The emphasis on the biological
aspects of human beings was a result of the theory of Charles Darwin. He
asserted that organisms changed throughout time by a process called evolution.
This refers to the aided survival by mutations in the DNA that either helped
living organisms avoid dying or helped them reproduce. The mutations could be
beneficial or harmful. Francis Galton took the theory of Charles Darwin and
explained that those mutations happened in individuals’ intelligence. Thus,
there were groups, such as immigrants, that would never reach the intelligence
of other groups.

Galton, who was the cousin of
Charles Darwin, introduced the concept and eugenics. This is the notion that
human beings with desired attributes should be supported, encouraged, and
protected, and the ones without those characteristics should not be allowed to
live. This idea was central in the political system at the time. In fact,
Hitler based his actions on the notion of eugenics. He described Eugenics as the
“study of the agencies under social control that may improve or impair the
racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally” (1).

An argument created against Galton
was that the tests were limiting the resources of Chicanos because they were
being penalized for having low scores on biased tests. Other arguments included
that the tests’ language. For example, there are words that were commonly used
by Americans in the north of the U. S., but unknown to the average Mexican
American. Additionally, the tests were created using a normal distribution.
Thus, if American students were used to generalize the intelligence test, the
Mexican Americans would normally fall under the distribution. This means that
the tests were not valid or reliable. According to the American Psychological
Association and the American Educational Research Association, test should be
fair and have as a purpose to help individuals, but as was seen before the
Binet-Simon scales were not fair.

Another form of intelligence tests
that were target of controversy that revolved around Mexican American
discrimination were those developed by President of the Psychological
Association of America Robert Yerkes. He developed two types of tests: Alpha
and Beta tests that were given to the military to test whether they were fit
for combat. One of tests was given to literate individuals, which usually
encompassed Americans. They had to read and answer questions related to word
problem solving. The other test was given to illiterate people, which was
usually groups of Mexican Americans. Participants had to finish incomplete
picture and questions that revolved around completing patterns. This was biased
and was not an efficient way to measure intelligence because the second test
does not measure the same elements of the first test. This resulted in the bias
known as construct validity.

The tests created by Yerkes were
used to discriminate immigrants coming from Europe during the first World War.
People who followed the notion of eugenics did not wanted immigrants in the
United States because they would alter the biological nature of intelligence in
Americans. Therefore, the tests were used as evidence to support the desire of
eugenicists to keep out the maximum number of immigrants coming to America.
Nevertheless, it was not only used for European immigrants, but for Mexicans
that were moving to the U. S. too.

In conclusion, intelligence test developed
by psychologists such as the Yerkes military alpha and beta tests and the
Binet-Simon scale were used as a way to justify discrimination towards
Chicanos. The tests were culturally and technically unfair and contained four
types of biases that created a negative impact in the Mexican-American culture.
Nevertheless, the tests have been revised and carefully crafted in order to
avoid the prejudices that once existed in America.

References

Dennis, P. M. (1984). The Edison questionnaire. Journal
of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 20, 23-37.

Goodwin, C. J. (2015).A history of modern psychology. New York: J.
Wiley.